Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The JD Power 3YIS Survey

The results of JD Power's 3 years-in-service quality survey have been posted. There is some good news here for Detroit: Ford, GM, and Chrysler all have divisions that place above industry average. Ford has Ford brand, Mercury, Lincoln; GM has Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac; Chrysler has Chrysler brand.

Interestingly, the most reliable Ford car at 3YIS is the Lincoln LS/Ford Thunderbird. (The LS and T-Bird appear to be dying off, quietly)

However, there is some definite bad news here, too, on the other side of the industry average line. Ford has Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and second to dead last, Land Rover. GM has Saturn, the defunct Oldsmobile, GMC, Pontiac, Subaru, Saab, Daewoo, and Isuzu at worse than average. Chrysler has Dodge, Mercedes, Jeep. Mercedes is actually worse than Chrysler brand and Dodge. In fact, Mercedes is closest to Saab, with 273 and 278 defects/1000 vehicles, respectively.

Why are Ford's premium brands worse than industry average? The Premier Auto Group needs some kind of whoopin'. It is no wonder that Lexus and BMW is eating their lunch. And Mazda--Mazda is supposed to bring Japanese quality to Ford, not the other way around.

GM's domestic premium brands are doing well, but the bread and butter--Saturn and Pontiac, GMC--are not. This will continue to hurt residual values, so GM has to turn these guys around. Like Ford, GM's foreign premium brands are struggling.

Some highlights of the competition:

Hyundai is slightly worse than average, however, its cousin KIA is dead last, with 397 problems/1000 vehicles.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I don't have last year's results nearby (and I'm too tired to search for them), but the results don't seem all that different from prior years. The European brands have long had poor scores in the 3YIS survey, but Americans preceive them as having higher quality than the Domestic brands.

Since my Saabs are 16 and 19 years old with 135k and 271k respectively the first thing to admit is that my concept of what constitutes a "problem" may be a little bit off the norm. Heck, I took the AC compressor off my '86 because it was in the way.

Having said that I would like to add that my fiancé’s 2003 Mini had 4 things fixed during the 25k mile service. It got a firmware update relating to a recall, a new O2 sensor, a new power window regulator and a new power lock switch. Helen wants to drive her Mini forever (after all I know how to work on “cars”) while I am dreading the day it goes off warranty.